Given these ingredients – and this is just a small sample of the mind-altering ‘drugs’ found in human semen – Researchers Gallup and Burch, along with the psychologist Steven Platek, hypothesised that women having unprotected sex should be less depressed than suitable control participants.

THE BENEFITS OF SEMN.

Other recent findings from Gallup’s laboratory suggest that semen-exposed women perform better on concentration and cognitive tasks and that women’s bodies can detect ‘foreign’ semen that differs from their long-term or recurrent sexual partner’s signature semen.

They suggest the ability to detect foreign sources is an evolved system that often leads to unsuccessful pregnancies – via greater risk of preeclampsia – because it signals a disinvested male partner who is not as likely to provide for the offspring.

Their findings also suggest that women who have unprotected sex with their partners – and therefore are getting regularly inseminated by them – experience more significant depression on breaking up with these men than those who were not as regularly exposed to an ex’s semen, and that they also go on the rebound faster in seeking new sexual partners.

To investigate whether semen has antidepressant effects, the authors rounded up 293 college females from the university’s Albany campus, who agreed to fill out an anonymous questionnaire about various aspects of their sex lives.

Recent sexual activity without condoms was used as an indirect measure of seminal plasma circulating in the woman’s body.

Each participant also completed the Beck Depression Inventory, a commonly used clinical measure of depressive symptoms.

To investigate whether semen has antidepressant effects, the authors rounded up 293 college females from the university’s Albany campus, who agreed to fill out an anonymous questionnaire about various aspects of their sex lives.

Recent sexual activity without condoms was used as an indirect measure of seminal plasma circulating in the woman’s body.

Each participant also completed the Beck Depression Inventory, a commonly used clinical measure of depressive symptoms.

The most significant findings from this study, published in the Archives of Sexual Behavior, were that, even after adjusting for frequency of sexual intercourse, women who engaged in sex and ‘never’ used condoms showed significantly fewer depressive symptoms than did those who ‘usually’ or ‘always’ used condoms.

Importantly, these chronically condom-less, sexually active women also evidenced fewer depressive symptoms than did those who abstained from sex altogether.

By contrast, sexually active heterosexual women, including self-described ‘promiscuous’ women, who used condoms were just as depressed as those practicing total abstinence.

The research suggests it is not just that women who are having sex are simply happier, but that happiness levels might be related to the quantity of semen within their body.